It wasn't a Dreamliner; it was a 767. Somewhat disappointing but at least no 767 has suffered from spontaneous combustion. At least Boeing haven't admitted it. A standard and uneventful 8 hour flight shortened by 20 minutes by a tailwind preceded a non-standard and quite eventful hour in the baggage collection area. And it was those oil filters.

To fill you in: Clare Long, a teacher at Bingham who has been here ever since we left her to it in December 2007, has a Kia Sportage vehicle from 1998. It needs 2 oil filters (why two I hear you ask? All I can say is it must be a Korean thing) that are not available in Ethiopia at all. After much to-ing and fro-ing with a local Kia dealer in Harpenden before I left, I managed to get two of each filter for Clare. Hence the vacuum-packed bedding case had 4 oil filters in it; cunningly packed I thought to look like reinforcements to the corners of the case.

The baggage collection hall in Addis Ababa airport beggars belief. There are 4 belts to collect from, spread out down a huge open space (no barriers or anything - Health and Safety hasn't made it here yet) and in between the belts are literally (and I mean that literally) hundreds of bits of baggage. Nothing to do with the arriving flights - these are unclaimed and make walking through the area a bit tricky. Especially as some sleepy folks sort of lay down amongst them and doze. Well, the air of rejoicing Chris and I experienced when ALL SIX of our bags came into the melee melted away when the man x-raying our luggage got to the bedding bag and said the dreaded words "oil filter"! I will not dwell on the fact that he appeared to know exactly what Kia Sportage oil filters look like on x-ray pictures.

I will simply describe the series of events that ensued.

Open case and get an oil filter out...he takes my passport and puts it in a drawer...I wait while the next persons luggage is emptied of dozens of pairs of shoes that are piled in a heap...I wait....I wait...he writes stuff on a piece of paper in a big pad (in triplicate using carbon paper), gives me the top two and says "number four"...I locate window number four - a glass screen with someone behind it only communicatable with by sticking either your lips or your ear through a small hole roughly cut in the glass...there's a queue at number four and he's processing one person every 10 minutes and there are 6 people in the queue...I wait....I wait....I get frustrated....a random Ethiopian guy grabs my paper (and everyone else's) and shoves them under the glass screen...I wait....I wait....man behind screen processes my paper and talks in Amharic...a bilingual Ethiopian woman tells me I cannot pay duty on these oil filters unless I have a car registration document...I go back to Chris who waves to Clare the other side of the arrivals barrier...we negotiate with soldiers with guns to let Clare in...Clare and I go back to number four...she has a driver's licence and a resident permit...We have to go to number five...woman behind number five fiddles with a computer, writes squiggles on paper, asks me how much the oil filters cost, and demands 989 ETB (Ethiopian Birr - 30 to the pound)...I ask if I can pay in dollars...no I can't I have to join the (very long) queue at the currency exchange window...I do, Clare goes to tell everyone what's going on...i wait...I wait...another random Ethiopian bloke waves me forward past the queue...soldier with gun ushers me to a separate currency exchange window...on a shelf falling off the wall I write my name on a piece of paper, sign it and give a lady $150...she calculates the amount in ETB to 4 decimal places (one ten thousandth of a Birr) and gives me 2800 or so...I go back to number five...we pay the duty...she prints a receipt on a dot matrix line printer from the 1980s...I go back to the original bloke throwing shoes about and give him the piece of paper...he locates my passport in a drawer (go on admit it you'd forgotten about my passport)...I get my passport back and return to Chris...high fives all round...we drag all the luggage out of arrivals and hug people.

Phew!

After that it all went smoothly. By the end of the day we'd unpacked, had injera and wat for lunch, met more people than we could possibly remember, had a nap, been taken out to dinner to the home of a Korean teacher who cooked us traditional Korean food, had our devices registered on the Bingham network and discovered there is a good interrnet connection from the school. Boy were we ready for bed!